Tuesday, June 09, 2009

High above the Second Life region called The Unknown is a small dark island floating in the sky, which is an unlikely location to build a meth lab. Unless, say, you're roleplaying a drug dealer with a dirigible-- or as it turns out in this case, you're a metaverse developer who wants to demonstrate SL's utility as a simulation training tool for individuals who need to recognize real meth labs.

"We hope to encourage use of SL for training law enforcement and social workers," Fred Fuchs (Gus Plisskin in SL) explains to me. Plisskin is the founder of Firesabre, a consultancy that showed off the lab during last month's virtual worlds conference at Wharton. (Above 20 minutes into the video at that link.) "We found that a walk-thru helped other types of clients think about ways they could use SL." It's also one of the more innovative real world applications of Second Life I've seen. Unless you've visited several actual meth labs, it'd probably be difficult to immediately identify one (as opposed to, for example, a kid's high school science project), and photos would likely not convey the whole meth lab gestalt as well.

Firesabre's lab was built based on photos from police websites, Plisskin tells me, and the accuracy of the simulation is derived from his experienced as a contractor with NASA. "I wrote simulations for the International Space Station," as he puts it, "Accuracy in simulations is 'my thing'."

We get weird about that in the Midwest since it's a daily thing here. Fires, deaths, etc. Being a chemist (shocker) takes more than a fifth grade education it seems.

I wrote a piece once advocating the mix of Second Life & meth production but I chickened out. The basic outline was sandboxes.

Instead of these people cooking up a batch in their home endangering their kids or neighbors, we give them an area in the middle of nowhere that is open to their craft. You know - like a sandbox. No police, no bother.